Crafty is WAY Cool

Allison Hoffman crochets amazing, miniature replicas of celebs and common folk alike and writes about them on her blog, CraftyisCool. Her story is one of the classic Never-Could-Happen-Before-The-Internet success stories of our generation. In her own words: "I started CraftyisCool in 2007 when I had trouble finding Yo Gabba Gabba toys for my little boys. I crocheted my first toy and after many requests for the pattern, I started up an online shop and a Ravelry store soon after. I created a Conan O’Brien doll and teamed up with Mike Mitchell from “I’m With Coco” for a giveaway. The doll went viral and was blogged about by everyone from Perez Hilton to Entertainment Weekly. After I sent a big crocheted blimp to Conan O’Brien on a whim, he posted a picture of himself with his gift on his blog, Twitter page, and Facebook showing off my handiwork to the world. Soon after came several tweets from Pee-wee Herman, linking his followers to my Pee-wee, Chairry, and Jambi dolls, as well as several famous faces posing with dolls I created in their likenesses. Jimmy Kimmel was gifted a little Jimmy for his birthday from his sister, who had seen my work online..."
And so it goes. Now she's a big local celeb in Austin, TX, where she lives and is working on a fun crochet book. Maybe someone needs to crochet a miniature of her now and repeat the, er, pattern.

Vlad Korneev is a man with an obsession. He's spent years collecting technical and industrial objects from the last century—think iron lungs, World War II gas masks, 1930s fans, and vintage medical prostheses. At his Designpanoptikum in Berlin, which bills itself (accurately) as a "surreal museum of industrial objects," Korneev arranges his collection in fascinating, if disturbing, assemblages. (Atlas Obscura warns that it's "half design museum, half horror house of imagination.") Recently, the Midnight Archive caught up with Vlad for a special tour and some insight into the question visitors inevitably ask—"but what is it, really?" You can watch the full video below.

Microscopic Videos Provide a Rare Close-Up Glimpse of the Natural World

BY Kirstin Fawcett

September 21, 2017

Courtesy of Nikon

Nature’s wonders aren’t always visible to the naked eye. To celebrate the miniature realm, Nikon’s Small World in Motion digital video competition awards prizes to the most stunning microscopic moving images, as filmed and submitted by photographers and scientists. The winners of the seventh annual competition were just announced on September 21—and you can check out the top submissions below.

FIRST PRIZE

Daniel von Wangenheim, a biologist at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, took first place with a time-lapse video of thale cress root growth. For the uninitiated, thale cress—known to scientists as Arabidopsis thaliana—is a small flowering plant, considered by many to be a weed. Plant and genetics researchers like thale cress because of its fast growth cycle, abundant seed production, ability to pollinate itself, and wild genes, which haven’t been subjected to breeding and artificial selection.

Von Wangenheim’s footage condenses 17 hours of root tip growth into just 10 seconds. Magnified with a confocal microscope, the root appears neon green and pink—but von Wangenheim’s work shouldn’t be appreciated only for its aesthetics, he explains in a Nikon news release.

"Once we have a better understanding of the behavior of plant roots and its underlying mechanisms, we can help them grow deeper into the soil to reach water, or defy gravity in upper areas of the soil to adjust their root branching angle to areas with richer nutrients," said von Wangenheim, who studies how plants perceive and respond to gravity. "One step further, this could finally help to successfully grow plants under microgravity conditions in outer space—to provide food for astronauts in long-lasting missions."

SECOND PRIZE

Second place went to Tsutomu Tomita and Shun Miyazaki, both seasoned micro-photographers. They used a stereomicroscope to create a time-lapse video of a sweating fingertip, resulting in footage that’s both mesmerizing and gross.

To prompt the scene, "Tomita created tension amongst the subjects by showing them a video of daredevils climbing to the top of a skyscraper," according to Nikon. "Sweating is a common part of daily life, but being able to see it at a microscopic level is equal parts enlightening and cringe-worthy."

THIRD PRIZE

Third prize was awarded to Satoshi Nishimura, a professor from Japan’s Jichi Medical University who’s also a photography hobbyist. He filmed leukocyte accumulations and platelet aggregations in injured mouse cells. The rainbow-hued video "provides a rare look at how the body reacts to a puncture wound and begins the healing process by creating a blood clot," Nikon said.